THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (SMH) is a daily compact newspaper
published by
Fairfax MediaFairfax Media in Sydney, Australia . Founded in 1831 as
the
SydneySydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published
newspaper in Australia and a national online news brand. The
newspaper is published six days a week. It is available nationally
except in the Northern Territory. Limited copies of the newspaper are
also available at newsagents in New Zealand and at the Australian High
Commission in London.

The
SydneySydney Morning Herald includes a variety of supplements,
including the magazines Good Weekend (which is included in the
Saturday edition of The
SydneySydney Morning Herald); and Sunday Life. There
are a variety of lift-outs, some of them co-branded with Fairfax
Media's online classified advertising sites:

According to
Roy Morgan Research Readship Surveys, in the twelve
months to March 2011, the paper was read 766,000 times on Monday to
Friday, and read 1,014,000 times on Saturdays. The Audit Bureau of
Circulations 's audit on newspaper circulation states that in December
2013 an average of 132,000 copies were sold, Monday to Friday, and
228,000 copies on Saturday, both having declined 16% in 12 months. By
February 2016, average circulation had fallen to 104,000.

Concerning the newspaper's website smh.com.au, third-party web
analytics providers Alexa and
SimilarWeb rate the site as the 17th and
32nd most visited website in Australia respectively, as of July 2015.
SimilarWeb rates the site as the fifth most visited news website in
Australia and as the 42nd newspaper's website globally, attracting
more than 15 million visitors per month.

In 1831 three employees of the now-defunct
SydneySydney Gazette , Ward
Stephens, Frederick Stokes and
William McGarvie , founded The Sydney
Herald. In 1931 a Centenary Supplement (since digitised) was
published. The original four-page weekly had a print run of 750. In
1840, the newspaper began to publish daily. In 1841, an Englishman
named
John Fairfax purchased the operation, renaming it The Sydney
Morning Herald the following year. Fairfax, whose family were to
control the newspaper for almost 150 years, based his editorial
policies "upon principles of candour, honesty and honour. We have no
wish to mislead; no interest to gratify by unsparing abuse or
indiscriminate approbation."

During the decade 1890, Donald Murray worked there.

The SMH was late to the trend of printing news rather than just
advertising on the front page, doing so from 15 April 1944. Of the
country's metropolitan dailies, only
The West Australian was later in
making the switch. In 1949, the newspaper launched a Sunday edition,
The Sunday Herald. Four years later, this was merged with the newly
acquired Sun newspaper to create The Sun-Herald, which continues to
this day.

In 1995, the company launched the newspaper's web edition smh.com.au.
The site has since grown to include interactive and multimedia
features beyond the content in the print edition. Around the same
time, the organisation moved from Jones Street to new offices at
Darling Park and built a new printing press at
Chullora , in the
city's west. The SMH has since moved with other
SydneySydney Fairfax
divisions to a building at Darling Island.

In May 2007,
Fairfax MediaFairfax Media announced it would be moving from a
broadsheet format to the smaller compact or tabloid-size , in the
footsteps of
The TimesThe Times , for both The
SydneySydney Morning Herald and The
Age.
Fairfax MediaFairfax Media dumped these plans later in the year. However, in
June 2012,
Fairfax MediaFairfax Media again announced it planned to shift both
broadsheet newspapers to tabloid size, in March 2013. Fairfax also
announced it would cut staff across the entire group by 1,900 over
three years and erect paywalls around the papers' websites. The
subscription type is to be a freemium model, limiting readers to a
number of free stories per month, with a payment required for further
access. The announcement was part of an overall "digital first"
strategy of increasingly digital or on-line content over printed
delivery, to "increase sharing of editorial content", and to assist
the managements wish for "full integration of its online, print and
mobile platforms".

In July 2013 it was announced that the SMH's news director, Darren
Goodsir, would become Editor-in-Chief, replacing Sean Aylmer.

On 22 February 2014, the final Saturday edition was produced in
broadsheet format with this too converted to compact format on 1 March
2014. ahead of the decommissioning of the printing plant at Chullora
in June 2014.

During the
2004 Australian federal election2004 Australian federal election , the Herald announced it
would "no longer endorse one party or another at election time". The
newspaper said the policy might yet be revised: "A truly awful
government of any colour, for example, would bring reappraisal." The
Herald subsequently endorsed the conservative Coalition at the 2007
NSW state election , but endorsed Labor at the 2007 and 2010 federal
elections , before endorsing the Coalition again at the 2013 federal
elections : "The Herald believes only the Coalition can achieve ".

The newspaper has in recent years attempted to spearhead political
campaigns, including the "Campaign for Sydney" (planning and
transport) and "
Earth HourEarth Hour " (environment).

Fairfax went public in 1957 and grew to acquire interests in
magazines, radio and television. The group collapsed spectacularly on
11 December 1990 when
Warwick Fairfax , great-great-grandson of John
Fairfax, attempted to privatise the group by borrowing $1.8 billion.
The group was bought by
Conrad Black before being re-listed in 1992.
In 2006, Fairfax announced a merger with
Rural Press , which brought
in a Fairfax family member, John B. Fairfax, as a significant player
in the company.

CONTENT

COLUMN 8

COLUMN 8 is a short column to which Herald readers send their
observations of interesting happenings. It was first published on 11
January 1947. The name comes from the fact that it originally
occupied the final (8th) column of the broadsheet newspaper's front
page. In a front-page redesign in the lead-up to the
SydneySydney Olympic
Games in 2000, Column 8 moved to the back page of the first section
from 31 July 2000.

The content tends to the quirky, typically involving strange urban
occurrences, instances of confusing signs (often in
Engrish ), word
play , and discussion of more or less esoteric topics.

The column is also sometimes affectionately known as Granny, after a
fictional grandmother who supposedly edited it. The old Granny logo
was used for the first 20 years of the column and is occasionally
resurrected for a special retrospective. The logo was a caricature of
SydneySydney Deamer , originator of the column and its author for 14 years.

It was edited for 15 years by George Richards, who retired on 31
January 2004. Other editors besides Deamer and Richards have been
Duncan Thompson, Bill Fitter, Col Allison, Jim Cunningham, Pat Sheil,
and briefly, Peter Bowers and Lenore Nicklin. The column is, as of
March 2017, edited by Tim Barlass.

OPINION

The Opinion section is a regular of the daily newspaper, containing
opinion on a wide range of issues. Mostly concerned with relevant
political, legal and cultural issues, the section presents work by
regular columnists, including Herald political editor
Peter HartcherPeter Hartcher ,
Ross Gittins and
Elizabeth Farrelly , as well as occasional
reader-submitted content. Iconoclastic
SydneySydney barrister Charles C.
Waterstreet , upon whose life the television workplace comedy Rake is
loosely based, had a regular humour column in this section.

GOOD WEEKEND

Good Weekend is a liftout magazine that is distributed with both The
SydneySydney Morning Herald and
The Age in Saturday editions.

It contains, on average, four feature articles written by its stable
of writers and others syndicated from overseas as well as sections on
food, wine and fashion.

Other sections include "Modern Guru", which features humorous
columnists including
Danny Katz responding to the everyday dilemmas of
readers; a regular column by writer Benjamin Law ; a
Samurai Sudoku ;
and "The Two Of Us", containing interviews with a pair of close
friends, relatives or colleagues.

* ^ "Top 50 sites in Australia for News And Media". SimilarWeb.
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* ^ "Top 50 sites in the world for News And Media > Newspapers".
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* ^
http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/herald-appoints-first-woman-editor-in-its-180year-history-20110110-19l78.html
* ^
John Langdon Bonython , Address of the President, Journal of
the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Volume XXIV, Parts 1 and 2,
1933-34, p8.
* ^ "The
SydneySydney Morning Herald Centenary Supplement 1831 - April
18th - 1931" (PDF). The
SydneySydney Morning Herald. 1831. Retrieved 20
April 2016.
* ^ smh.com.au
* ^ Tabakoff, Nick (3 May 2007). "\'Smage\' journos must adapt".
The Australian. Retrieved 5 July 2011.
* ^ Souter, Gavin (1 March 2013). "History makes way for compact
future". The
SydneySydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
* ^ A B Zappone, Chris (18 June 2012). "Fairfax to shed 1900 staff,
erect paywalls".
SydneySydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
* ^ Simpson, Kirsty (18 June 2012). "Fairfax moves to \'freemium\'
model". The
SydneySydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
* ^ "New
SydneySydney Morning Herald Editor-in-Chief announced". Sydney
Morning Herald. 30 July 2013.
* ^ Homewood, Sarah (28 January 2014). "Fairfax to complete
transition to compact". The
NewspaperNewspaper Works. Retrieved 25 February
2014.
* ^ Elliot, Tim (7 June 2014). "Full stop for
Chullora print plant
after 19 years". The
SydneySydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
* ^ "Editorial: It\'s time for a vote of greater independence". The
SydneySydney Morning Herald. 7 October 2004.
* ^ "Editorial: Why NSW cannot afford four more years of Labor".
The
SydneySydney Morning Herald. 22 March 2007.
* ^ "Editorial: The more they stay the same …". The Sydney
Morning Herald. 24 November 2007.
* ^ "Editorial: Australians deserve a government they can trust".
The
SydneySydney Morning Herald. 6 September 2013.
* ^ "Behind the lines. Year\'s best political cartoons.". National
Museum of Australia. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
* ^ "Behind the lines. Year\'s best political cartoons.". National
Museum of Australia. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
* ^ "Behind the lines. Year\'s best political cartoons.". National
Museum of Australia. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
* ^ "Behind the lines. Year\'s best political cartoons.". National
Museum of Australia. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
* ^
Ruth Park (1999). Ruth Park's Sydney. Duffy & Snellgrove. ISBN
1-875989-45-5 .
* ^ A B C "26.19 Granny George calls it a day" (PDF). Australian
NewspaperNewspaper History Group Newsletter. University of Queensland's School
of Journalism ">(pdf (20 pages)) on 16 February 2008. Retrieved
2008-01-15.
* ^ A B "8.37 Changes in the Herald: Who will make me smile before
breakfast?" (pdf (19 pages)). Australian
NewspaperNewspaper History Group
Newsletter. University of Queensland’s School of Journalism &
Communication (8): 17–18. August 2000. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
* ^ "41.26 Has the world gone mad? Column 8 at 60" (pdf (20
pages)). Australian
NewspaperNewspaper History Group Newsletter. University of
Queensland's School of Journalism & Communication (41): 8. February
2007. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
* ^ Souter, Gavin (1983). "Deamer,
SydneySydney Harold (1891–1962)".
Australian Dictionary of Biography . Canberra: Australian National
University. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
* ^ A B Ramsey, Alan (4 February 2004). "George has moved on but
his Granny still lives".
SydneySydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
* ^ "32.31 Column 8 Changes Style" (PDF). Australian Newspaper
History Group Newsletter. University of Queensland’s School of
Journalism ">(pdf (20 pages)) on 16 February 2008. Retrieved
2008-01-15. The Column 8 has a new editor, Pat Sheil, and he is
changing the style of the 58-year-old
SydneySydney Morning Herald column. "I
am trying to make it a bit edgier than it was", he told
MediaWeekMediaWeek (11
April 2005, p.6). "Basically, Column 8 should be like a chat, without
making it too trite or stupid." George Richards edited Column 8 for
fifteen and a half years before retiring early last year (see ANHG
26.19). James Cockington edited it until handing over to Sheil in
February this year.
* ^ "
NewspaperNewspaper and magazine titles". Trove. National Library of
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* ^ "
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* ^ Brown, Jerelynn (2011). "Tabloids in the State Library of NSW
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FURTHER READING

* Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. The world's great dailies:
profiles of fifty newspapers (1980) pp 314–19
* Gavin Souter (1981) Company of Heralds: a century and a half of
Australian publishing by
John Fairfax Limited and its predecessors,
1831-1981 Carlton, Victoria:
MelbourneMelbourne University Press, ISBN
0522842186
* Gavin Souter (1992) Heralds and angels: the house of Fairfax
1841-1992 Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, ISBN 0140173307